Battenberg cake is a famous English dessert that was supposedly created in honor of German Prince Louis of Battenberg, who married a granddaughter of Queen Victoria (also named Victoria) in 1884. There is no evidence that Battenberg cake was served at the wedding party but middle-class people would have flocked to taste something that was named after royalty. The cake itself was a luxury: two Genoese sponge cakes, one yellow and one colored in bright pink, divided into long strips & arranged on top of each other to look like a chess board. White and brown versions (with chocolate) are popular today but turn-of-the-century recipes insisted on pink that was easily obtained with artificial food coloring.
Prince Louis of Battenberg (1854-1921) was not entirely of royal blood since his mother Julia was only the daughter of a Polish minister and was given a title by her brother-in-law (the Prince of Hesse). She was made the Countess of Battenberg, a small town in a historic region of Germany. During the Middle Ages, that land was held by a Wittgenstein branch who styled themselves counts but the line had died out by the 14th century and the place was empty. The Countess of Battenberg, which means Little Hill, became a princess so when her son married the English fiancée he was already Prince Louis. After the Great War, his title ( - Battenberg) was changed into the English surname Mountbatten. Louis had served in the British Navy since 14 years old, earning promotion after promotion often on merit, until he became First Sea Lord in 1912 but he was obliged to retire from service because of his German origins.
Re-creating Battenberg cake proved more difficult than it looks on various websites because, as usual, I made all the parts from scratch. The recipes for Genovese cake and Marzipan that I used are both copied from Frederick Vine, Saleable Shop Goods for Counter-tray and Window (1898) - a cookbook obviously addressed to professional bakers so it's loaded with recipes for sophisticated desserts. Battenberg is spelled Battenburg here but the recipe is just the same. Genoese cake is divided into strips, half of them are colored pink, then assembled into a chequered pattern with jam in between, and the finished dessert is glazed with Marzipan. The same recipe was published with different names and by different authors that year - including the 'queen of ices' Agnes B. Marshall. Variations of uknown date and origin also exist, featuring brown squares instead of pink ones, that are easily made with cocoa. However, most late nineteenth century housewives, let alone pastry-makers, would have colored their sponge cakes pink because additional kitchen equipment was so much in fashion that cookbooks were full of advertisements.
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Genoese cake
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These are Frederick Vine's directions for professional Battenberg cake:
Take the Genoese cake batter (Nos. 191 or 192), divide it in two; colour the one half pink with carmine and leave the other plain; spread separately over a sheet of paper and bake to about one inch thick. When done, take off the paper and cut into square strips; then lay them alternately chess-board fashion, sandwiching them together with any kind of preserve - for the bottom layer, say two white and one red in the centre; for the second, two red and one white in the centre; and on top of that the same as the bottom layer. When you have fixed them altogether so (Fig. 98), make up the Almond paste (No. 11), roll it out in a sheet, and after spreading some preserve upon the build-up square of the cake, roll it round outside of the cake. Pinch along the edges and decorate with the point of a knife or skewer, by scratcing a design upon it. The almond paste must not be too thick, or it will not look nice. Then either cut the cake up into inch sections, or sell whole at 1s. per lb."
3lbs. flour, 2 1/2lbs. sugar, 2lbs. butter, 1 quart eggs
Mode. — Put the butter into a clean pan, and run it to oil on the oven-stock; put the eggs and sugar into a sponge cake machine, and beat it up well, the same as for sponge cakes; when well beaten up, turn in the butter, and give it a* mix in the batter. Then takeout the wires, and mix in the flour with your hand; have ready two tins, with sheets of white paper laid smoothly upon them, and a wooden upset along the bottom; divide the batter equally between the two; spread it out smoothly with a palette knife, and bake in a moderate oven. When done, turn off the tins on to a wire, and leave for forty-eight hours before you proceed to cut it up."
1lb. ground almonds, 2 1/2lbs. pulverized sugar, 4 to 6 whole eggs
Mode. — Mix the sugar and almonds together dry on the board ; make a bay, and break in the eggs ; then make up into rather a firm paste, according to the pur- pose to which you desire to use it."
BATTENBERG CAKE
In the following version, I used half of the Yellow Almond Paste and 1/3 of the Genoese by Frederick Vine. Tempted by descriptions of an original Battenberg cake with 25 squares that was made closer to Louis and Victoria's wedding, i.e. 14 years before recipes were introduced by cookbook authors, I made a cake with 12 squares rather than Frederick Vine's 9. (Commercially produced Battenberg cakes even in the first half of the 20th century have 4 squares.) The Marzipan turned out a little drier than suggested in the original recipe. Perhaps it wouldn't have if I'd used the maximun number of eggs. To avoid contamination, I pasteurized the eggs by heating some of the mixture in the oven and the rest in a saucepan. Colouring the Genoese cake batter was also not safe, I thought, but having read about the misfortunes of people who experimented with natural food coloring, I decided to save time and effort by using cocoa. Even with these minor changes, the finished cake turned out delicious, especially thanks to Frederick Vine's wonderful 'Genoese' recipe. For best results, use the maximun number of eggs there, or if you don't, moisten the cake with a light syrup that you will prepare with 200ml water, 50g sugar and 50g of your favorite brandy.
I n g r e d i e n t s
for the Genoese cake:
450g plain flour
3tbsp cocoa
225g butter
300g sugar
6-8 large eggs
for brushing:
280g homemade jam
for the Marzipan:
225g ground almonds
560g powdered sugar
2-3 large eggs
M e t h o d
1. Prepare a meringue with the egg whites. Beat the yolks with the sugar, gradually adding half of the flour. Stir in the remaining flour, alternating with the meringue. 2. Weigh the batter, pour half of it into a bowl and mix with the cocoa. Transfer both mixtures, yellow and brown, in two cake tins or a large baking sheet that you have divided in two. (I used a rectangular form divided in two 18x35 sections that I lined with parchment paper. If you butter your tin or parchment paper, leave the sides out.) 3. Bake for 35 minutes or until golden. 4. Divide each cake into 6 strips when cool, brush each with jam and make a chess-board, adjusting the width of the base to your needs. 5. Prepare the icing by mixing the ingredients in a large bowl. Roll out between two sheets of parchment paper. Brush the cake with more jam, then dress the top and sides (and bottom, if liked) with almond paste.
N o t e
To pasteurize the eggs, a) combine with half of the sugar over a double-boiler until the temperature reaches 60C, then mix with the ground almonds or b) mix the almond paste ingredients, then place in a hot oven for about 15 minutes, taking care not to burn the mixture or c) mix the almond paste ingredients, then heat in a non-stick pan for no more than 15 minutes, stirring vigorously.
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